We had a very timely reminder on FB this morning, about our last photography workshop, in The Gambia, January 2014. Timely, because this time next week we will be holding our next workshop, in-country.

January 2014, Photography Workshop, The Gambia: The students spent most the first day in the classroom with their tutor, photographer and filmmaker, Jason Florio, where he covered the following topics: a brief history of photography; what is a photograph; portraiture; environmental portraiture; reportage; landscape photography (including showing the students images from all of our contributing photographers); guides and techniques; what makes a good photograph; rules of photography (rule of thirds, leading lines, etc.); lighting; editing…

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Looking back over the inaugural of ‘Photos Tell Stories: teaching photography – a visual language‘ workshops, which we taught earlier this year here in The Gambia, West Africa (thanks to the US Embassy, Banjul, for partnering with us). And, we can happily say that we are still as impressed by the quality of the young students photography – especially because almost all of them had never used a camera before.

We just returned from the village of Kartong, after teaching another successful ‘Photos Tell Stories‘ photography workshop with students chosen from the Press Club of St Martins Basic Cycle School. Not one of the students had used a digital camera before – although a couple of the students used their phone cameras sometimes. After a morning of theory, with tutor and photographer, Jason Florio, in the classroom, we sent them off to photograph the village in which they lived. Yet again, we were captivated by the work that they produced throughout the day. The average age of the students was fifteen years old.

These are just a few samples of the Press Club students work – which, at the end of their days shoot, they edited with the help of workshop tutor and photographer, Jason Florio. Then, as we have been doing after all of the Gambian workshops, projected their images onto the cinema-sized inflatable screen (thanks to Josh and the guys at the US Embassy, Banjul – our main partners for the workshops in The Gambia), later that evening – to audience of around 150 enraptured villagers!

We also had an overseas guest for our Kartong workshop, our nephew, Tyrone Florio; who had recently flown in from the UK. Tyrone is studying photography and decided he wanted to come out and help us with the workshops. However, there is no room for nepotism in the ‘Photos Tell Stories‘ camp as we set Tyrone the same assignment as the rest of our students. We think he did very well too.

Thanks to FujiFilm, USA, for the digital cameras which our ‘Photos Tell Stories’ Gambian students used to produce some very creative, insightful, and encouraging work. Encouraging, because it has spurred us on to want to do more workshops in West Africa.